Encased
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Avatar World Week; Day 1 - Earth: Long Feng, intent on taking vengeance, traps Azula in a crushing wall of earth.


She is encased in rock. Earth, closes in around her like a tomb and she doesn't know how to fend it off. She doesn't think that she can. She has never met an earthbender so cruel as herself. This man, might be even crueler. She'd never killed anyone, not unless the resurrected Avatar counted. Even if she did kill someone, she would make it quick; a swift lightning bolt, they'd be gone in a rather literal flash. But this man, he is vile through and through. He is going to kill her and he is doing it slow. Boxing her in, suffocating her.

Clearly, he is still pissed off that he has lost his own game. He is still bitter over losing his Dai Li and resentful over losing his power and agency.

But this time he is the winner. No amount of fire can break through this one.

Even if it could, she didn't have the room to execute even a basic stance.

He had taken her by surprise. In all of her days and during all of her battles with earthbenders, not one of them has even surrounded her with a wall of earth. Not one of them had been so evil as to push those walls together. She has never seen an earthbender fight so dirty.

There is nothing she can do short of pressing her arms against one of the walls and pushing back. But she drops them quickly, if she doesn't, they will snap.

It gets to a point where she can no longer breath, the rocks have reached her chest, they keep it from rising fully and they reach her abdomen, keeping her lungs from expanding wholly. She doesn't even have room to shudder out panicky breaths. Those are trapped, locked within a body that will soon be crushed. And Azula cries because she doesn't want to die, not like this. Not at all.

She doesn't think that begging for her life will help, Long Feng doesn't have the look of someone willing to spare the life of an enemy. No, she refuses to beg. The least she could do herself is to die with dignity. She close her eyes as the stones close more space.

She feels pressure now. All over her body. She is being squeezed, she know that she will start to hear bones snapping. That is, if she doesn't asphyxiate first. She kind of hopes that she does, it would be a lot less painful.

She wishes that she can take herself out with a bolt of lightning, that would also be less painful.

More than that she wishes that she could break herself free, so to not die at all.

She is no longer able to breathe at all, her chest and stomach unable to expand at all, restricted by her earthy prison. Her vision goes mercifully fuzzy. Things start to feel strange, lighter somehow. A sense of peace sets in as she fades out of the world.

 **.oOo.**

Azula wakes up with the taste of copper on her tongue and the sense that she wasn't supposed to have woken up at all. Her head hurts so terribly and lungs burn and ache. A dull pounding resounds through all of her limbs.

She is bruised all over, she can feel it.

She needs to know how bad it is.

Standing before a mirror, she lifts her shirt and confirms her suspicions. There are dark purple-yellow marks running the length of her body. Mostly they dot her hips and chest, those are the worst of them, the most swollen and discolored.

She thinks that her bones are fractured in places—they don't look quite right—and that she shouldn't be standing at all. She touches her ribcage and winces, it is very tender. They aren't broken as far as she knows, but if she exerts herself wrong, they will be. So she carefully makes her way back to the bed, wondering who had saved her and if they regret having done so.

She winces when her elbows hit the mattress the wrong way and she realizes that they are actually probably in worse condition than her midsection. They are swollen to the point where she can barely bend her arms at all.

She shudders.

"You're awake." Zuko notes. She doesn't know when he had entered.

Azula nods. "Why did you save me?"

"I didn't, Toph did." He quickly adds, "I tried though. But…uh…well Toph had to save my ass too." And she notices that his arm is in a cast.

"He did it to you too?"

"Yeah, but I didn't think my response through, I should have kept my arm down like you did." He scowls.

"What happened to Long Feng?"

"He's up for execution." Zuko replies. "For treason and attempted murder among other things."

"You mean like, breaking out of prison in the first place?"

"Yeah, like that."

They are silent for some time. This is the first time that they have spoken civilly, or at all really, since she put on her Kemurikage show. Somehow it is comforting to know that Zuko landed himself in the same predicament. At least she wasn't the only failure this time around. "Does it hurt?"

He looks at his broken arm, "not too much." He pauses. "Are you in pain?"

Azula thinks for a moment. "I suppose it's more of a discomfort."

"Yeah, you were out for a few days, which was probably a good thing."

"I'm probably going to need to take a few more when Toph comes in here to remind me that she saved me."

Zuko chuckled. "Yeah, she still hasn't come off of it with me yet." In a true act of sibling comradery, he tells her that he'll buy her a little time by telling Toph that she is still out cold. At least she will have time to mentally prepare herself for some embarrassment and come up with at least some witty comebacks.

"I guess, I'm glad that I'm alive to hear her get smug."

"I'm glad you're alive too." His smile is warm.

She thinks that perhaps, the whole situation is going to be a good thing in the long run. That perhaps those walls of tightening earth had squeezed the vendettas and evil out of her. She rubs her head against the pillow. "Thanks, Zuzu. I'm glad she saved you."


End file.
